


Worthy

by Untherius



Category: Brave (2012), Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Gen, Ragnarok
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:58:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2654558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Untherius/pseuds/Untherius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There'd been a time when Merida's biggest worries consisted of over-bearing mothers, bears, and the Anglish.  With the end of all things at hand, the Queen of DunBroch realizes how minor those troubles had really been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Merida, Queen of DunBroch, perched herself at a large, round conference table somewhere in the bowels of the Royal Palace of Asgard. She'd been led there by Sif and escorted by several armed guards, all carrying weapons that were at once familiar and strange. It was no wonder the ancient Norse worshiped the Aesir as gods. And, for all Merida knew, they really were gods.

She looked about the table--hewn, so Sif had said, in a single piece from one of the most ancient branches of Yggdrasil itself.

She recognized all the faces to whom she'd been introduced the day before, Sif, Thor, Odin, Heimdall, Frigg, and Freya not least among them.

“As you all know,” began Odin, “we stand upon the threshold of Ragnarok. Long has this doom been foretold. And just as long have we labored to forestall it. Yet we of all people should have recognized long ago that things have been put into motion that cannot be undone.”

“If you'll forgive my impertinence,” said Merida, “you speak of this Ragnarok as though it were a prophecy.”

“Yes and no,” said Freya.

“Long have we watched,” said Heimdall. “We have weighed and measured causes and effects and all permutations of this and that event.”

“You see,” said Odin, “all choices, decisions, and actions have consequences.”

“So they do,” said Merida soberly. “And you believe the natural and unavoidable consequence of all our collective actions over the centuries to be Ragnarok, is that it?”

“It is so,” said Thor.

Merida frowned. “Then is there nothing to be done?”

“If that were so,” said Frigg, “then why would we have called you here? Why also would we have gone to the trouble of assembling fallen warriors in Valhalla?”

“Ragnarok,” said Thor, “has the potential to destroy everything so that not one stone rests upon another anywhere in the Nine Realms. Too long have we labored to defend Midgard, Vanaheim and the others to just sit idly by and watch it all laid waste.”

“So,” said Merida, “aside from asking me to lead the armies of Midgard against Loki and whatever forces he brings against the free peoples of the Nine Realms, what, exactly, is your plan?”

“We mean,” said Odin, “to force Loki's hand and compel him to fight in a place of our choosing. But be forewarned, Merida Drottning DunBroch, that your task will be very difficult.”

“So you've said. Not only must I lead the armies, I must also first convince every country in the world to not only believe me, but also to set aside their differences. Then we must put aside food to see us all through the Fimbulwinter. And then if we survive that and the violence among those who've not seen fit to prepare, I must be General to all of Midgard's fighting men and women.

“Now, I'd say I have but one more question, but I think we all know that even if that were true, its answer would lead to more questions. For now, where is it, precisely, that you mean to hold this great battle?”

“The plains of Vigrid.”

Merida frowned. “I'm afraid I don't know where that is. And I should. Unless you mean me to try to convince people that we're going to a place no one's ever heard of. Too many will laugh at me as it is. And if, as you've said, we're to defeat Loki, we're going to need all the help we can get. Which means, among other things, giving me all the information, including the location of Vigrid.”

Odin laughed. “You are direct, Merida Drottning. I like you. You would know Vigrid as the place you call Siberia.”

“Oh, joy,” said Merida flatly. “Couldn't you have chosen someplace, I don't know, warmer? Like Arabia? Or northern Africa?”

Odin's eyes narrowed. “Would you like to fight there?”

“It's better than Siberia. And don't tell me there isn't enough room in Egypt. I've seen Alexandria and let me tell you, once you get away from the Nile, there enough desert there to choke a camel!”

“And just how,” said Thor, “would you propose to feed and water all the armies of Midgard were they to camp in Egypt?”

Merida leaned forward. “There's plenty of water in the Nile and they can bring their own bloody food,” she said curtly. “It's my job to convince them to come. It's up to them to decide how they do it. Besides, if this battle is going to be as nasty as you say it is, nobody's going to have to feed an entire army for very long anyway.”

Thor chuckled, the sound deep and sonorous. “You are not wrong, Drottning,” he said.

“You make a good case,” said Odin. “Very well, it is not too late to change the location of Vigrid. We have looked upon the face of Midgard more times than we can count and we know that what you say of Egypt is true. There is, as you say, not much there to trample. The place is a wasteland, so at least that much will remain unchanged.

“The Nile will once again run red with blood. The sea you call Mediterranean, too, as the blood of the fallen seeps through the sands. And that is if things go well. If they do not...then there may not be much of a home for you or anyone else to return to.

“You have three years to prepare. Three years of the Fimbulwinter. When it abates, Heimdall will blow a great blast on his horn. This will be the sign to assemble the warriors of Midgard upon the plains of Vigrid. There, the warriors of Valhalla, Asgard, and the free peoples of the Nine Realms will meet Loki and whatever abominations he will summon.

“And now, I believe we have talked long enough. This meeting is adjourned. Tomorrow, you will return to Midgard to begin your preparations.”

With that, Odin stood, the others assembled following his lead. One by one, they drifted purposefully out of the room. Which was something else that rather baffled Merida. Everything the Aesir did seemed purposeful. Whether it was feasting, sparring, drifting out of rooms, or just standing there gazing at something. They were all so...intense. It made her exhausted just watching them. Which may have been the point.

* * *

Merida drew her bow as far as she could. Well, it wasn't her own bow, actually. She'd have thought the mechanics to have been the same. As things would have it, however, the Asgardian long bow she'd been lent, while not that much heavier on the draw than her own back home, required a little bit of adjustment.

She let the string roll off her fingers. The arrow flexed strongly, then moments later smacked into the target, just slightly off-center.

“Not bad, Fergusdottir,” said Sif. “Not bad at all.”

Merida nodded courteously to Sif. “A lifetime of archery tends to do that.”

“You said you've been doing this about as long as you could walk?”

“Nearly, yes.”

Sif smiled broadly. “It shows. How's your rapid-fire?”

Merida pulled six arrows from the quiver at her waist. She nocked one, holding three others in her bow hand and two in her string hand. She drew, then released. WHAP-WHAP-WHAP-WHAP-WHAP-WHAP!

She turned back to Sif, who raised an eyebrow. “Can all Midgardians shoot like that?”

“I don't think so, no. I've insisted that all warriors under my rule learn it. And we've heard rumors of others in other parts of Midgard who can do it. But it seems to be a bit of a rarity.”

“Hmm,” said Sif. She raised her own bow, six arrows in her bow hand and four in her string hand. WHAP-WHAP-WHAP...WHAP! She turned back to Merida. “If we're to win Ragnarok...or, should I say, should we wish to avoid it consuming everything...every archer on Midgard must learn to shoot like this.”

Merida reached for her nose, then scratched at her chin instead. Some habits were just so hard to break. “If we don't use those skills to kill each other first,” she said sourly.

Sif sighed. “Yes, well. You people do seem prone to that sort of thing. Pity, really. You have so much potential for greatness if you'd just pull your heads out of your arses for a few moments.”

Merida cocked her head. She knew more people than she could count who'd have been deeply offended by that comment. Yet she knew with equal certainty that Sif was absolutely right.

“Well,” said Merida at length, “you're not wrong. Not by a long shot, sad to say.”

“So how do you plan to solve it?” asked Sif as she sent several more arrows toward her own target.

“I've no bloody idea!” Merida retorted as she, too, hurled more arrows. “Nice grouping, by the way,” she added.

They set their bows down and walked down range.

“Seriously, though,” said Merida, “we're havin' trouble just convincin' the bloody Anglish to keep to themselves. It's bloody irritating, it is. Quite frankly, I've only just begun to think about that. It's quite the challenge the Allfather has set before us and it's quite daunting, sure an' it is.”

“You think ours is any easier?”

Merida pulled an arrow from her target and looked at Sif. “Well...aye, actually, I do.”

Sif tipped her head back and laughed.

“I wasn't joking.”

“Of course you weren't,” said Sif once her laughter had subsided. She pulled an arrow. “Oh, to be sure, we've had far longer to plan. But there are many things only we understand. Chief among them how formidable a foe Loki is. Also, trying to balance the affairs of the Nine Realms is a severe headache. And that's on top of the cosmos-wide...I suppose the metaphor you might use is 'game of chess'...that is preventing Ragnarok from completely obliterating everything.

“There are manners of beasts the likes of which most of you Midgardians have scarcely imagined, many of which we expect to be involved in Ragnarok. And that's before, during, and after the battle at Vigrid. So, Merida Fergusdottir Drottning DunBroch, your job is, in point of fact, quite a bit easier than ours. You need only unite Midgard and bring its armies to Vigrid when Heimdall issues the call.”

“Oh,” said Merida, making little effort to hide her sarcasm, “is that all?”

Sif chuckled. “Ja,” she said as she pulled the last arrow from her target.

Merida finished several moments later. Then the two of them strolled back uprange. “I'm going to live to regret this, aren't I?”

“If you're lucky, yes.”

“If I'm lucky? Oh, that's not reassuring at all,” she said sarcastically. Then, “Something tells me this Ragnarok is expected to be a lot worse than Odin lets on.”

“What part of 'no stone left upon another' did you find vague?”

“Good point,” said Merida. She unstrung her bow, then handed it and the quiver of arrows back to a waiting pair of hands. Sif unstrung hers, but kept it and her quiver of arrows on her person. Merida figured they were Sif's personally.

Sif led Merida through the labyrinth of Asgard until they finally arrived at the main gate leading across the crystalline bridge toward the Bifrost.

“This is where I bid you farewell, Merida Fergusdottir,” said Sif. “I expect we'll fight together at Vigrid and each do many great deeds in battle.”

Merida nodded regally. “Yes, I do believe we shall.”

Sif extended her hand and Merida clasped it firmly. “Until we meet again, then.”

“Aye.”

Sif released and then was gone. Merida walked briskly across the bridge and into the spherical room. “Well,” she said to Heimdall, “send me home, if you would be so kind.”

Heimdall flipped his sword around and thrust it into the pillar that stood in the center of the room. The walls began to spin, slowly at first, then faster and faster until Merida felt she might be dizzy, perhaps even throw up. She focused on Heimdall and the pedestal on which he stood.

“How will I recognize your horn?” Merida asked. It was a valid question, though she was fairly certain she asked it at least as much to distract herself from the spinning room as out of tactical necessity.

“You will know,” said Heimdall. He thrust his sword downward.

Merida felt herself lurch outward and into the Bifrost stream. She hurtled across the cosmos, stars and planets rushing past her at impossible speeds. At last, she saw Earth rise up quickly before her. Europe, the British Isles, then Scotland rushed at her. Then she lurched to a stop. The light cleared and she once again stood at the center of the main square of Castle DunBroch, a Norse knotwork pattern inscribed into the very stones themselves that lay beneath her feet.

Hamish rushed up to her. He skidded to a stop just outside the circle of knotwork, looking down at it. “Well,” he said, “that's different.”

Merida strode over to him.

“So?” he asked. “How'd it all go?”

She laid a hand on her brother's shoulder. “Hamish, we have work to do. A bloody, manky, arse-load of work to do!”

“Oh?”

“Walk with me, brother.” He fell into step with her as she strolled toward the interior of the castle.

“Whatever it is,” he said, “I have a bad feeling about it.”

“You have no idea.” She related everything she had seen and heard on Asgard. When she'd finished, Hamish stood there silently.

“You're joking,” he said finally.

“Do I look or sound like I'm joking?”

“No, I suppose not. But how? How are we going to unite the world?”

“I'm working on that. But first, we have to prepare for the Fimbulwinter. That's one area in which you and our brother can be of help. And no, it can't wait.” She stepped over to a table, picked up a wax tablet and a stylus, and began to carve. “This is just the beginning,” she said as she handed it to Hamish.

He looked it over. “Like Joseph in Egypt, eh?”

“Just so, aye.”

Hamish laid a hand on Merida's shoulder. “You know I didn't want to be bored anyway, aye?”

Merida chuckled. “Aye.”


	2. Chapter 2

Merida leaned against a sturdy wooden table, peering intently at a large sheet of parchment stretched out on its surface. She took another bite of oat bread and absently set it back onto the table. She glanced up at Hamish.

“Are you sure about that?” she asked.

“Saw it with me own eyes,” he said. “Well, some of it, anyway.”

Merida exhaled, her breath a plume of steam in the early September air. She reached for a quill, then scrawled some notes alongside the name “Scandinavia” on that part of the map that filled the parchment.

“I was afraid of that,” she said as she added the last few words. She glanced back up at her brother. “At times like these, I hate being right.”

Not that there'd ever been times like those, not really. But in many respects, a crisis was a crisis. It was the scale that made the difference.

“Send word to the Clans,” she said. “We sail at month's end.”

“What about the Anglish?”

Merida cocked an eyebrow. “What about them? It's all in the plan. The plan you helped shape, I might add. No, the Anglish have given their response and their promise to be there. We both know what an Anglish promise is worth, but we have to let them worry about themselves. Besides, if they try to move on us after we've gone, they'll be wasting their time.”

Hamish nodded, grunting affirmation. “And they're screwed either way, right?”

“More or less. The real question is whether or not they actually believe us and aren't just smiling and nodding to make us go away.”

“Speaking of which, we really should finish packing.”

She nodded. “Good thing we're not given to excess, then, aye?”

“Aye.”

* * *

Merida stepped onto the last of the longboats, nearly slipping on the ice that crusted the well-worn dock. The masts of thousands of boats, most of them smaller than hers, turned the bay into a watery hedgehog. Every man, woman, and child in greater Scotland and all of their possessions bobbed in front of her.

She looked back up at the castle that had been her home for so long. She was sad to leave. But there was no way Scotland was going to support its population any longer, especially if the approaching winter was anything like the past one. If the snow-capped hills and crusts of ice everywhere were any indication, it was going to be worse. And so the only option left was to relocate the entire population and hope for the best.

One by one, the ships closest to the open sea dropped canvas to scud out southward in small groups. Convincing the Clans to agree to the plan had not been easy. In some ways, Merida still thought it had been even more difficult than dealing with the rest of the world. As it so often was with Scottish politics, it had come down to pulling rank and literally beating it into the naysayers herself.

Merida nodded to the ship's captain. He began barking orders. Several men picked up spears, braced their butts against the dock's pylons, and pushed. The boat slowly moved away. When the captain was satisfied, he barked other orders and able-bodied men and some women ran oars out both sides of the vessel.

The ship lurched slightly as it surged forward in response to the rowers straining at the dozens of oars. Smaller ships fell into formation around hers as they reached what passed for cruising speed.

Merida sighed deeply. She hadn't known just how she'd feel watching her people abandon home. Scotland was in her blood and that of all Scots. They belonged to the land far more than the land belonged to them, something she hadn't truly understood until she'd first announced her plan more than a year before. She'd seen it in the eyes of everyone she'd met afterward. She liked to think she'd grieved for it, but she still wasn't sure she was finished. Maybe she never would be.

As the ship rounded the headland, and its sails unfurled, she turned to look back. She watched as DunBroch Castle drifted out of sight. Then it was all gone, only the treacherous North Sea spread out before her and to port, to starboard the coast of Scotland that would give way to the coast of England as the fleet sailed south.

If the previous winter was any indication, the sea would soon begin to freeze. Bays, fjords, inlets, and similar smaller bodies would freeze first, then water close to shore. The general consensus was that the fleet should reach the English Channel before that body froze.

The greatest risk, of course, was the weather. The North Sea had a well-deserved reputation for being a particularly nasty piece of work. Merida had nibbled her fingernails down to their quicks over their collective survival. Yet every shipwright from every clan had assured her that the Norse longboats they'd built were perfect for such a journey and that so long as they remained within sight of shore, they should be fine.

That was another thing that worried her. English shores weren't perceived to be particularly friendly to Scots. A few ships could possibly have made the occasional landfall. But the whole country? Add that to the list of her other responsibilities. Someone had once told her that it was good to be the Queen. She glanced again at the open sea and wondered yet again if it really was that good.

* * *

Merida stood at the bow of her ship. Over the last several weeks, she'd learned far more about sailing than she'd ever known there was to learn. She'd also learned far more about sacrifice and leadership than she'd cared.  


Between heavy swells off Northumbria, early icebergs in the English Channel, unseen shoals off Brittany, pirates near the border between Spain and Portugal and near Gibraltar, collisions, friction with the Irish, continued inter-clan politics, trouble finding unoccupied land along the Atlantic coast of Africa, and more collisions, she'd had to make more hard decisions than she ever had in her whole life.

She'd tried to avoid counting the costs, but there were just some things that had become ingrained. She supposed it was one of the hazards of being in charge. There'd been several dozen deaths from hypothermia. Four ships had gone up in flames, presumably from fires their occupants had lit trying to get warm. Seven others had simply vanished without a trace. There were thirty-seven separate reports of drownings, and who knew how many others that had gone unreported. There were more cases of influenza than she could count, some of which had progressed to pneumonia and a few of those had been fatal. Some of that had cleared up as they'd sailed south of the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea, where it was warmer. Although that was more a matter of degree than anything.

“There!” She pointed to a tree-lined shore. It was just as the scouts had said. The Bijagos Archipelago lay southwest of the mouths of the Rio Grande de Buba and the Rio Geba. It was miraculously unpopulated, and there was plenty of land for both Scots and Irish to regroup in preparation for Ragnarok, and quite possibly permanent settlement afterward. It was going to be crowded, that much was certain.

Merida watched as the Gaelic Armada, as most folk had been calling it, spread out, each group bound for their assigned section of the island group. The agreement had been fairly simple: Everyone was to settle geographically according to their lands of origin. Thus, the people of DunBroch headed for the northernmost shores, the Irish to the westernmost, and so on. They'd iron out space-related details later when the inevitable agricultural issues should arise. The first priorities were housing, then defense, then carving out land for farming and herding.

She sighed. The area had once been tropical, or close to it. But the first year of the Fimbulwinter had turned it temperate. That was just as well. She'd heard about tropical diseases and really didn't want to have anything to do with those and if the persistently cooler weather meant reduced risks of things like cholera and malaria, she wasn't about to complain.


	3. Chapter 3

Merida watched two opposing shield walls crash together. There'd been a time she'd have flinched at it. But years of training by her father and several military incidents with the English had driven every bit of squeamishness out of her.

The sounds of wood-on-steel blended with the yells, shouts, and rattling crashes of a battle that ground on for another half hour. Finally, she'd had enough.

“ _HOLD!_ ” yelled Merida. She turned and gave the _HOLD_ signal to a page standing well back from the field of engagement. The lad blew several blatts on a ram horn and the battle ground to a screeching halt, though a bit slowly for Merida's taste. The crashes, thuds, and rattling died down until only the collective panting, gasping, and groaning of thousands of warriors met her ears.

As far as she could see, human and equine bodies littered the ground of Battlefield Island. The living stood among them like the two hundred odd trees she'd left standing for tactical training purposes. She surveyed the carnage, taking a couple of minutes to evaluate the results. She groaned, then gave her page the signal for _GATHER ROUND_.

Once the horn had faded, everyone made their way across the field. The living helped the “dead” and injured to their feet. She carefully watched as the allied Celtic army trickled across the field. The warriors under her command were less of an army and more of a collection of men and women with blood-lust in their eyes and revenge in their hearts. They had passion and aggression to spare, but the old tribal ways and frictions continued to be a problem.

“Right,” she said once everyone had assembled downwind of her. “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I'm impressed. The bad news is that if you fight like that against the Jotnar, they'll rip you apart in minutes!”

Murmurs and mutters of dissent floated through the throng.

“Truly!” Merida continued. “That was, without a doubt, the worst fighting I've ever seen. We have a deadline and we don't know when that is. If we don't get it together, then the emphasis will be on _dead_! Is this...” She made an encompassing gesture toward the battlefield. “...the example we want to set for the rest of the world? Is this the standard we want to set for the armies that will stand with us against the Jotnar at Ragnarok? If so, then we are all doomed!

“I've seen what you can do, and you're going to have to do a _lot_ better! So I'm going to teach the lot of you to fight as a unit. Now the DunBroch division will show you what I mean.”

Merida slid her helm onto her head and hefted her own shield and training sword. She nodded to her page, and the lad blew a combination of short and long blatts.

DunBroch, MacIntosh, MacGuffin, and Dingwall warriors queued up in two opposing lines, round shields covered with raw hide and emblazoned with a snarling black bear's head, heavy wooden training swords and dulled wooden pikes at the ready. She raised her sword, answered by Hamish, then called the charge herself.

Both lines surged toward each other, the roar of human voices filling the air. Merida braced herself as her shield slammed into Hamish's. The impact nearly knocked the wind out of her. She thrust her sword through a gap between her shield and her neighbor's. It stopped suddenly, answered by a startled yelp and a grunt. Hamish toppled backward onto the ground and lay still. She didn't bother to ask if he was alright. If he weren't, he at least would have been grimacing.

The opposing line pulled back suddenly, then contracted, a line of spears flickering downward.

“ _SHIELD WALL!_ ” she bellowed. She crouched down behind her own shield, her vision cut off by another rising above her head and others to either side until overlapping shields formed a barrier. Moments later, a sharp blow against her shield shoved her arm toward her body. A staccato thudding of wood against wood rippled up and down the wall.

“Ready?!” she called. Merida's world opened up again as the shields to either side retreated. “At them!” She rushed the opposing line again, thrusting and chopping. A blade glanced off her helm, another narrowly missing her shoulder.

The battle ground on for two more hours. The two lines continued to contract until only she and her brother Hubert stood face to face.

“So,” he said, “shall we finish this?”

“That depends,” she replied, “have you had enough?”

“The Jotnar will show no mercy, why should I?” He lunged at Merida.

She dodged, Hubert's sword whooshing by only inches from her face. She struck upward, the edge of her own sword cracking against her brother's wrist. He yelped, and dropped his sword. She shoved her shield against his torso, knocking him off-balance. She swept a foot at his knees, then shoved him onto his back, ending with the point of her sword at his throat.

“Not bad,” he gasped.

She held her weapon there for a few moments, then stepped back. She extended a hand and hauled Hubert to his feet. “And you, brother, should pay more attention. You still underestimate me. That will cost you your life.”

She turned to the assembly. “And that's how it's done! I want all the rest of you to be able to fight like that. You are not individuals. You are a single body and you must learn to fight like one. Now, we will all have a water break, and then I will meet with your commanders. If you have been injured, report to the chirugeon staff. In the mean time, I want you all to practice at the archery butts. That is all.”

One by one, the “slain” warriors picked themselves up from the ground. A few of them had minor injuries, mostly strains and sprains. There were several bloody noses, cuts, innumerable bruises, and even some possible internal injuries incurred from trampling.

Merida was not looking forward to equestrian training, or the eventual use of dulled live steel. She'd overseen some of that during the years of fighting with the English and there were always a few broken bones. Her father had insisted on training as if it were the real thing and Merida had continued that tradition. It was a very effective approach, but it had the unfortunate side effect of carrying a very real risk of very real injuries.

“So,” said Hamish, “what do you think?”

“Besides the obvious?” said Merida.

Hubert grunted in agreement.

“I think,” she said, “that if we don't all learn to fight as a unit, or at least as several units, then Ragnarok is going to end very, very badly. We can count on the Spartans to fight as a unit, and probably most of the other Greek states. The Holy Romans, too. The Japanese and Chinese probably have discipline. I think we can do something about the Norse and the Germans if we can convince them to stop feuding with each other.

“The Spanish and the French, once they get over themselves, should be fairly effective. I think we can even count on the Anglish to put aside their differences.

“The Arabs, and to a lesser extent the Byzantines, are likely to be unruly and there's very little chance they'll accept my authority over anything beyond, 'There's the enemy, go kill them.' Same with the Mongols. The Polynesians and the Zulu are going to be a nightmare. None of the American nations are seafaring, so we shouldn't have to worry about them.

“Overall, though, all those nations will have to worry about their own discipline, which makes my concern more about strategy than tactics. Fortunately, we only need be concerned with the other Scots, the Irish, and the Welsh.”

Hubert snorted. “Only?”

Merida chuckled ruefully. “We did forge most of the clans into a single nation during the last years of our father's rule and the first years of mine. We can do it again.”

“Ah, we didn't want to be bored anyway,” said Hamish.


	4. Chapter 4

Merida lay awake listening to rain pound her palm thatch roofing closer to oblivion. At least it drowned out the sound of her brother and his Welsh bride working on the next generation in an adjoining room. It wasn't as though Scots were particularly squeamish about such things. But for Merida, it was yet another reminder of how lonely it was at the top.

Their new home was strange. The plants, the wildlife, the warmth, and the occasional encounter with the dark-skinned people who lived on the mainland, all were unfamiliar. Even the rain was unfamiliar.

She and her people were certainly no strangers to rain. In Britain, it had rained all the time, often for days on end. There'd even been a joke in some places to the effect that “Summer was on a Tuesday this year.” Since the Fimbulwinter, of course, such statements had turned deadly serious.

Here in Bijagos, the climate was something called monsoonal. Which meant that it rained every day from May clear through November, hard rains that hit like a hammer on anvil, lasting for a couple of hours at a time. The other half of the year was bone dry. That pattern had forced everyone to re-learn what they knew about agriculture.

The first barley crops had failed entirely and the oats had done well enough only for the following season's planting. Yet no one had starved. A little mutton from sheep, root vegetables like turnips, radishes, and beets, plus bountiful fish from the sea and native coconuts kept everyone fed. Their second year, they'd traded with the natives: tools and teaching for things like yams, gourds, beans, and melons that grew a lot better in the warmer climate.

But even some of the local plants had declined, probably from the global effect of the Fimbulwinter. Some trees had died the first year and Merida's people had wasted no time turning them into timber for dwellings, fortification, the war engines destined for deployment at Ragnarok, and the larger ships needed to carry them.

Some of the preparation had gone well enough. With no real winter, crops grew year-round. Storing any of it, however, was problematic. Drying food was straightforward enough. Keeping it that way, on the other hand, was nearly impossible. Just as impossible was a root cellar and even so, guarding against insect predation had quickly turned nightmarish. Packing dried meats with salt in barrels, on the other hand, was ridiculously easy. The same could be done with date cakes, cooked yams, and eventually everything else they'd managed to dry.

And so such things conspired to keep Merida awake. At length, her brother and sister-in-law had their fill of one another and the rain tapered off for the remainder of the night, leaving only the sound of chirping crickets.

* * *

Pale yellow heralded another clear day. A light breeze blew off the sea to the west, rustling palm leaves. A coconut dislodged from high above, bouncing off a cane railing before coming to rest just off the center of a gravel path curving off toward the main docks.

Broad fields of melon, tapioca, and Lima beans lay between the path and the remnant mangroves forming a far-off perimeter. Sheep dozed in another field edged by a stacked rock-and-mud wall.

In the near-darkness of pre-dawn, Merida knew all these things more than she saw them. She'd approved every land allocation, and had even suggested some of it herself. Some days, she wished she'd had the time to properly landscape the small tract that circled her abode. It was barely more than a half-dozen paces wide and had been planted mostly in herbs and a few leafy greens, but its circumference was a good five hundred paces and then some.

Merida had been too busy for casual flower gardening anyway. But then, she'd known that since an early age. Her mother had pounded certain things into her head, sometimes gently and patiently, sometimes most decidedly not. One of those things was that as Queen, Merida was not likely to have much in the way of leisure time. Such had become very much the case since the onset of the Fimbulwinter.

That had been close to three years earlier, give or take several months, depending on how one figured such things. Since then, her life had been a steady string of days filled with building, training, drilling, practicing, planning, preparation, and everything else that needed done to help her people survive both the Fimbulwinter, and the coming battle of Ragnarok, to say nothing of whatever might be in store for them afterward. But their islands had come to feel more like home every day.

The truth was, it would probably stay that way. It had been a monumental pain in the arse to carve out the spaces needed for people to live, work, and be. Everyone had settled into the homes they'd built. Children had been born. Back in Scotland, everything was frozen and dead or dying. No one was going anywhere anytime soon.

She watched the sun continue to rise, seemingly lifted into the sky by the bird song that already filled the air. A baby's cry joined the music of life and Merida smiled.

That would be her little niece Ealusaid, born to Hamish and Ceridwen a few months before. Hushed voices soon followed and the baby quieted. At length, the floor creaked behind her.

“I see you're up early,” said Hamish, “again.”

Merida grunted. She hadn't always been an early riser. At least, not unless she'd wanted to be. To some extent, her penchant for sleeping in as a girl had been an act of defiance. As she'd taken on more and more responsibility, she'd found that she simply didn't have time to sleep in most days. Especially not since Ealusaid had been born. Babies apparently had a way of dictating everyone else's schedule.

“Well,” she said, “you know how it is.”

Hamish chuckled. “So, the usual?”

“The usual.”

The “usual” was a pre-meeting meeting that she, Hamish, and Hubert held over breakfast to sort out what really needed to be covered during the monthly All-Gael meeting that Merida had decreed from the day they'd first set foot on Bijagos. Those were in addition to the weekly reports everyone filed with her.

The first several months had been severe headaches. Things had moved quickly, with many needed decisions regarding logistics and prioritization. After the first year, everything had settled down to the point that most reports consisted of running tallies of food and weapons production and population changes.

Hamish gave her a squeeze on the shoulder before resuming his own morning routine. Merida stood there a little longer, feeling the cool morning air prickling at her bare arms and brushing her ponytail across her half-bare upper back. She turned, her light tunic just brushing the tops of her knees as she stalked bare-footed across the broad wrap-around porch, through a doorway, and across a sparsely-furnished communal living space to what she called her War Room.

Back in Scotland, such a place would have been a secure location deep within the bowels of a castle, or a well-guarded field tent. But with so little need of secrecy when it came to the preparations for Ragnarok, Merida hadn't bothered much with security. With everything revolving around the war effort, there had been little in the way of State secrets. There was still political friction, of course, but most of the will to off the competition had half-evaporated. Merida suspected that most feuding lords were just biding their time, hoping the other guy would take an arrow to the chest at Ragnarok.

Besides, the walls of every building on the islands, down to the last outhouse, had been walled with palm leaves. As such, it was very easy for anyone to learn whatever they wanted to know about anyone else's business.

Still, she'd placed the War Room at the center of the royal residence, right next to her own bedroom. It was the only part of the royal residence built of dried mud, rather than timber and palm leaves. She pulled on a cord that ran up through the ceiling and around a pulley to open a skylight. She repeated that twice more until all three panels stood halfway to vertical, letting air circulate and sunlight spill into the room.

On one wall hung a large map of the Bijagos Islands and the adjacent mainland, showing all major structures, cropland, storage areas, training grounds, and so forth. It was mostly accurate and done almost concurrently with the island surveys begun upon arrival.

On another wall hung another map of Egypt and adjacent northern Africa and Palestine. That one was far less detailed. Most of the information used to draw it had come second- or third-hand either from visitors to Scotland years before, or more recently from the locals on the mainland.

Both maps had been started the first month after arrival. Both had been painted directly onto the walls. The ink was a mixture of oak gall brought from Britain, and various local pigments mixed with egg whites. The result was a multicolored map of black, red, green, white, and yellow.

On a third wall, the one also bearing the door, Merida had painted a four-year calendar arranged in a grid. It extended beyond the expected time-frame for the remainder of the Fimbulwinter for strategic reasons. Despite repeated insistence to the world's other rulers whom Merida had asked to participate in Ragnarok, there was no real guarantee it would begin on time. Still, her plans by necessity revolved around that assumption, as well as the assumption that life would continue both beyond the army's departure, and beyond the battle itself.

Merida had written in graphite all sorts of details in the calendar's little squares: tasks to be completed; deadlines for them; appointments; meetings; training schedules; crop rotations; inventory. Sometimes she'd written notes in the margins, even if those referred to some document written down elsewhere, or to some person or group bearing the responsibility for a particular area.

The fourth wall held the limited library Merida and others had managed to salvage from Britain. Most of those were records or illuminated manuscripts of one variety or another.

A sturdy wooden table stood in the center of the room. Rather than being strewn with papers and documents, those were all arranged neatly. Merida had always insisted on it, though it required a good deal of effort on her part to counter her natural messiness. Those papers generally consisted of reports from the other island communities.

The reports covered everything Merida wanted to know at all times: supplies; readiness; various incidents both domestic and foreign; natural disasters both mild and severe; illnesses. If there was a detail about the current state of any aspect of anything happening in Bijagos, Merida wanted it at her fingertips. Some had complained that the level of detail she demanded was excessive, but she'd always argued that they were things she needed to know in order to properly prepare for the coming of Ragnarok.

In addition to the papers, other articles sat on the table: pencils; pen and oak gall ink; small lidded ceramic bowls containing the pigments used on the maps; sealing wax and the stamps used for it; spare blank parchment; and a couple of small knives.

Merida took several moments to look over the documents on the walls. She seldom needed more than that. She herself had created them, drawn them. Her every waking moment had been concerned with them. The details even invaded her dreams as often as not.

Hubert sauntered into the room a few moments later, Hamish stumbling in behind him.

Merida glanced at her brothers. “Mornin',” she said amiably, not bothering to qualify it.

She knew full well that Hamish's mornings were rarely good, probably owing to his status as a new father. Hubert's, on the other hand, tended to be quite the opposite. Although, Merida was quite certain that if the man continued with his “dabbling,” as he preferred to call his seemingly endless stream of female companions, he was going to be a father himself. How he hadn't managed that already was anyone's guess. Repeated discussions with him had only resulted in exactly the same thing: Hubert greeting her most mornings with a self-satisfied smirk that seldom failed to elicit an eye-roll. Which was probably why he did it.

Both men stepped over to the table.

“Anything change much?” Hubert asked.

“Always,” said Merida.

Her brothers groaned.

Merida shot them a glare before returning her attention to the business at hand. “Truth be told, there's not a whole _lot_ that's new today. In fact, I think we're about as ready as we'll ever be. Weapons production is holding steady. Training continues to improve.”

Hamish grunted. “Which means we'll have plenty of time for breakfast before everyone else arrives.”

Merida signed indulgently and shook her head. Leave it to her brother to always be thinking with his stomach.

The aroma of fresh coffee heralded its arrival. Merida stepped aside to allow Mathilda, her head Lady in Waiting, to enter with a tea tray, which she deposited on a small table that stood against the wall bearing the calendar. Merida thanked her and poured some of the dark brew from an earthenware jug into three stout stoneware mugs.

She took a sip of her own and smiled. Coffee had been one of the first trade goods they'd acquired from the natives shortly after first contact. The language barrier had been a problem at first. It hadn't taken long to realize that a few of the locals spoke Portuguese. Finding someone among her people who also spoke the language had been a little time-consuming. Shortly thereafter, Merida had tasted her first coffee. Mornings had never been the same since.

Merida turned her attention back to the walls, thoughtfully considering them as she sipped at her coffee.

According to her meticulously-kept calendar, it was three years, four months, and seventeen days since the Fimbulwinter had begun. Which was actually problematic, since not everyone agreed on just when it had started. There had been quite a few arguments over the point and Merida had been reduced to frequent head-bashing just to shut people up about it enough to focus on the practicalities of everything that needed doing. The point at present was that everyone should be prepared to move out at a moment's notice, something she'd repeatedly emphasized over the last six months.

On the map of Bijagos, running figures appeared in margins. Each subset of the Celtic Alliance had been responsible for its own work. Some were better at some things than at others. The Welsh, for instance, focused on archery, despite Merida's own penchant for it.

In total, two hundred heavy transport ships lay moored along inland waterways awaiting loading. Each was to carry at least one war engine. Seventy-five trebuchets, a hundred and fifty catapults, and three hundred dart-throwers sat ready, some of their more sensitive parts dismantled.

A thousand more medium transport ships also lay moored. They were to carry supplies and people. Five million cloth-yard shafts, two stout war-staves per archer, and two hundred thousand fire-hardened spears had been stacked in earthen storehouses. In addition, each warrior had his or her own suit of hard leather armor, two round shields, and whatever blades they'd managed to bring from Britain. Tents, tarpaulins, and tools of all sorts either sat under cover, or were to be brought from wherever they were in use.

In addition, thousands of barrels of salted pork and fish, drinking water, dried and salted fruits, nuts, and vegetables, sat under cover, enough for a month of travel to Egypt, three months there, and a month back. Merida remained guardedly optimistic about the chances of anyone actually surviving the battle, but she kept that to herself for the sake of morale. She hoped the Aesir had been exaggerating.

The map of Egypt was a lot sketchier. Everything she knew about the terrain was second- or third-hand. A lot would also depend on who arrived there first and on where the enemy would choose to attack. She wasn't even sure how their adversaries would arrive, except that some would come by sea. And so most of the notes and scrawlings on that map had question marks beside them. She was reasonably sure of only one thing: that the local Caliph would not be terribly thrilled about so many “infidels” camped out in his back yard.

At length, breakfast arrived. She and her brothers munched on muffins filled with egg and sliced fish as they contemplated the maps yet again.

After a short while, representatives from the other islands trickled in. Merida offered each of them a mug of coffee. Some accepted, others didn't, according to preference. She understood. Not everyone had taken a liking to the dark, pungent brew.

“Right,” she said, once everyone had arrived. “Let's have your latest, shall we?” Merida began every meeting like that. She scanned each paper as it was handed to her, making notes on other papers and on the wall, before laying it on a small, but growing, stack on the table.

“Aye, very good, very good indeed. I'm glad to see things have stabilized.” That had been a concern ever since their arrival. While the cold weather from the first months of the Fimbulwinter had depressed many of the tropical diseases, others, mainly worm-like parasites, had been initial problems. While even those had declined sharply over the first year, they'd taken scores of people with them and had weakened scores more.

“Now,” she continued, “as for...” She abruptly broke off.

“Your Majesty?” said Prince Llewelyn.

“Do you hear that?”

“Nay,” said Eoghan Ard Righ. “What is it we're to be hearin'?”

Merida said nothing, her ears straining at something more felt than heard, a sound, a vibration, rolling beneath the usual bird chatter and ubiquitous buzzing insects. Whatever it was, it was building.

“I don't...wait,” said Hamish.

For several more moments, everyone in the room held their collective breaths, each trying to hear something that hadn't been there before. Merida abruptly stalked out of the room, through the living area, and out onto the porch, boards creaking beneath her feet. One by one, the others joined her at a north-facing railing, looking out across the fields of yam and beets and maize.

“I think,” said Llewelyn, “you may be imagining things.”

Merida shook her head slowly. Whatever it was continued to grow. It almost reminded her of a cross between a cow's low and a buzzing locust, but deeper.

“I hear it,” said Hubert. “It's like...”

Merida drew in a sharp breath, her blood chilling in her veins. She'd known in her mind that it had been coming, yet a part of her still hadn't believed. “It's the Gjallarhorn,” she breathed.

“Are ye sure?” said Eoghan.

The sound grew progressively louder, taking on a wider range of tones and with them a rumbling that Merida felt clear down into her bones. In less time than it took to draw three more breaths, the sound had risen into something that could have been a ram's horn blowing a warning from one of the coastal watch towers. But its tone was all wrong for that.

The long blatt became a rumble like what Merida had imagined the siege of Jericho to have been like, complete with shaking ground. Soon, she could barely hear herself think, to say nothing of trying to say anything. Not that there was much to say at the moment.

The Gjallarhorn held for a couple dozen heartbeats, then slowly died, the sound still ringing in her ears. For a time, the silence was just as deafening as the sound it had replaced. Even the birds and the bugs were quiet.

Everyone abruptly began talking all at once. After a moment, Merida bellowed, “ _SILENCE!_ ”

All eyes turned toward her. “Well?” she continued. “We've been planning for this. You all know what to do. So, go to it!”

After a blink or two, each person stood up straighter, saluted, then spun about and bustled off. Merida exhaled heavily. “That means us, too,” she said to her brothers.

“We're nae sleepin' any time soon, are we?” said Hubert.

Merida only chuckled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My mom tells me that when we lived in Northern Ireland, the locals used to say that "Ah, well, summer was on a Tuesday this year." I was too young at the time to remember it. But she told me about it and I still use it. For example, here in the Pacific Northwest, in 2011, "summer was on a Tuesday." That year, it took forever for the snow to break up in the Cascades. In the lowlands, tomatoes didn't ripen and everyone panicked over the loads of green ones they had. As it turns out, anything you can do with a tomatillo, you can do with a green tomato.
> 
> In the PNW, the native peoples used pigments mixed with salmon eggs to paint totem poles. It's very effective, so I borrowed the idea.


	5. Chapter 5

Merida watched the last shreds of mangrove slide past her. Ahead, what passed for the main river on Uracane Island flowed between two large expanses of sand. The one to the east had been barely visible when she'd first seen it, a hundred paces from the tree line to the surf at low tide. But with so much water locked up in snow and ice, sea level had dropped. Now that sandy apron extended clear to the delta channels half the island's width to the south.

Her helmsman piloted the ship expertly along the main channel. There'd been talk of dredging it out. But tests with the shallow-draft long-ships had been promising and Merida's engineers had been optimistic that even fully-laden vessels were unlikely to run aground. Besides, there were so few places either along the coast or inland where a ship could be either built or loaded, that the only other option would have been to anchor each ship and ferry the cargo from shore, an idea universally detested.

Her ship met the prevailing current from the mainland rivers and turned westward. Merida watched her island drift past her starboard beam, letting the memories wash through her mind.

Despite tightly-organized preparation, it had still taken a couple of weeks to wrap everything up. In that time, there had been a steady stream of last-minute weddings and many a man's enthusiastic attempts to leave something of himself behind with the women remaining on the island.

Merida was among the first wave of ships to sail. That had been a subject of debate as well. Some thought she should remain longer to supervise. But she'd written down her instructions, procedures, and laws quite thoroughly. Besides, she'd insisted that she'd be needed for initial contact with all the military leaders expected to arrive in Egypt.

The sun was well past zenith by the time Caravela Island slid past her starboard beam. Each of that flotilla's fifty-seven ships hoisted sail and turned northward.

* * *

The next few weeks showed Merida more of the fallout from the Fimbulwinter. She'd been prepared for the lower sea levels that had turned the Bijagos archipelago into what almost amounted to a single land mass divided by a braided river channel. But seeing it all the way up to Gibraltar was something else.

Day after day, the fleet sailed past expansive sand aprons, dried mud flats, and rocks made white by sun-dried algae. In many places, the signs of life she'd seen during the initial voyage south had vanished. Merida knew about some of it from the reports she'd received in the early months after settling in Bijagos. She'd heard about more of it second-hand. But whether those who'd settled the coasts, refugees from various places in Europe, had managed to move inland before dying she didn't know.

Perhaps she didn't want to know. That way led to madness. She had enough on her mind anyway as the green coasts gradually gave way to barren rock and sand. Only briefly were they able to put in near the occasional river mouth. Otherwise, there was nothing but sand in most places between the edges of the slowly dwindling forests and the Strait of Gibraltar.

* * *

Merida eyed the Rock of Gibraltar, its pale cliffs still gleaming in the failing sunlight. A persistent chill hung in a stiff north breeze that ruffled the already choppy water between her and the expanse of sandy plain that surrounded the Rock. She pulled her wool a little closer.

They'd stopped fighting the current once they'd passed the Strait of Gibraltar. But Merida had a schedule to keep, one that would wait for no one. And so she'd ordered only a day's rest from the constant rowing. Even with the change in current and the wind at their backs, time was of the essence.

She craned her neck to look up at the sun, now just past zenith. Through the Fimbulwinter, the weather had never been particularly warm. Warmer than Scotland, to be sure, although that wasn't saying much. Even when the fleet had sailed following the sounding of the Gjallarhorn, it had been all but impossible to tell that the Fimbulwinter had broken. She was beginning to think that much had been wishful thinking on her part and perhaps a misunderstanding.

The sun's dimming hadn't been particularly noticeable at first. In fact, no one had so much as mentioned it until the first vessels had begun to swing around the Moorish coast. Even then, it had been, and still was, a matter of warmth. In point of fact, it felt a lot like the midwinter sun in Scotland on a hazy day.

She turned her attention to the foreign ships that ghosted across the water between her and the Rock. Two of them had joined her at the mouth of the Strait and still sailed as escort, though out of formality or paranoia, Merida wasn't sure. The others appeared to be on patrol across the small bay formed by the peninsula bearing the Rock. They were all Moorish Corsairs, but flying the colors of Spain.

That didn't surprise Merida. Reports from afield had been inconsistent and confusing. From them she could still deduce a few basics. The Fimbulwinter had driven everyone on the Iberian Peninsula toward to the southern coast. There, the Spanish, Portuguese, and others had clashed with the Moors occupying some areas of southern Spain. The fighting had apparently been fierce and often desperate, but the Moors had been driven across the water to Africa, their ships, weapons, castles, and so forth seized as spoils of war.

But the death toll had been frightening. So much so, that Merida's envoy to Spain had failed to secure any sort of promise from its king with regard to participation in Ragnarok. Merida was still hopeful. If other reports from other areas were indicative, few of Spain's neighbors had any strength left to mount raids, even if left largely undefended.

More sails appeared from somewhere within the harbor. Merida began counting. One...two...five...ten...she eventually stopped at thirty-seven. The lead ship, a bit larger than the others and outfitted with black sails, pulled ahead of the others. Merida watched it sail almost directly at her, clearly on an intercept course.

It adjusted course almost at the last moment, falling in alongside her ship. Aboard it, one man stood out among the others. His attire matched that of the rest of the crew, most of it woolens and leather with what Merida guessed to be some cotton. He stood on the vessel's bridge, one of only a few not dashing about giving orders, or working the ropes. His bearing, like many she'd seen before, was one of supreme confidence. And he looked directly at Merida.

Merida looked right back at him. For many moments, they locked gazes. Then he nodded, probably exaggerated so that she could see it, but much more than he would have were he standing in front of her. Then he turned to another man, who moments later began to bark orders.

At length, the other ship began to pull ahead. Merida's frown morphed into a grin. She turned to her own First Officer. “What do you think, Captain? Does it look like they want a race?”

The Captain grinned back. “Aye, your Majesty. It does indeed.”

“Well, then, I suppose it would be a shame to disappoint them.”

“Aye, it would.” The Captain turned and barked orders. Activity erupted all over her ship. The sail shifted, more men jumped to the oars, and her ship shot ahead of the Spanish. She waved and could just hear the King of Spain bellowing laughter across the water.


	6. Chapter 6

“We're supposed to water the armies of the world with _this_?” asked Hubert.

Merida glared furiously at the westernmost branch of the Nile Delta. “Aye, well,” she glowered. “Minor setback.”

“Ye call that minor?”

Merida just snorted. Water had been a problem ever since leaving Bijagos. They'd brought a lot with them in barrels. They'd counted on resupplying in places that should have had fresh water. Most of those sources had turned up nearly dry, some completely so.

For that reason, the fleet had skirted southern France. The Rhone River, despite an obviously reduced flow, nevertheless had had small bergs of fresh-water ice floating in it. The same had been true of a few smaller, apparently unnamed, streams in northern Italy.

The fleet had bounced around between there and Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, then to the western Greek coast and then southeast to Crete before striking out across the Mediterranean Sea to the Nile delta.

But even what was famed as the largest river in the Old World wasn't delivering on that promise. Of all the multiple channels pouring out into the sea, fully half of them had contracted into muddy ditches. Egyptians fiercely guarded those that remained, especially those that were still navigable.

“If Ragnarok is only half as bad as the Aesir promised,” she continued, “we won't _have_ to water the armies of the world. Not for long, anyway.”

“Ye say that like it's a good thing.”

“It's my job to mind the particulars, brother. Which in this case, means thinking about long-term logistics.”

“But it's depressing.”

“Aye, well, it's the Apocalypse, is it not? Depressing comes with the territory.”

“I thought we were here to avert the Apocalypse.”

Merida nodded. “So we are. Whether we succeed remains to be seen. And be it as it may, the cost will be very high.”

Hubert snorted. “Ye've only reminded us every time we practice melee. 'Look to the left an' the right. One of those people will not be comin' home with us.'”

“It's true. In the meantime, we have to figure out how to keep from killing each other before we have a chance to kill the Jotnar.”

Hubert rolled his eyes. “Easy for you to say.”

Merida chuckled ruefully. “Tell me about it. For the present, we need to find the main stem of the Nile. We sail along the coast until we find it. Look for, oh, a mud flat with a ribbon of water running through it. But one a lot larger than this thing.” She gestured toward the mudhole.

The fleet found the Nile's mouth much further up the coast at the tip of a sandy spit. Conspicuous bars ran along both sides. The river cut across another bar running perpendicular to the stream's flow. The whole thing had evidently been about as wide as the fjord back in DunBroch, and the sand bar had probably been underwater prior to the onset of the Fimbulwinter. But falling sea levels had turned that bar into a spit, the water on the land side an estuary.

Merida ordered the fleet over the bar. Her ship bucked in the rough water churning through the bar's gap. It wasn't the first time she'd been glad to use Norse ship designs, nor was it the last. The fleet ground its way up the Nile, one ship or another occasionally running aground and having to be pulled off.

The fleet made camp on Rahmaniyah Island west of Desouk. Scouts discovered several abandoned settlements on the island. No human remains had been found, nor was there any sign of what might have been done with any such remains. Why the previous occupants had left remained a mystery. Merida was less sure it mattered. Even so, she declared a one-hundred-pace buffer zone around each settlement. No one, aside from the intensely curious, was inclined to violate the rule.

Death from crocodile and hippopotamus attack, however, was very much a real threat. Warriors combed the shorelines, methodically contributing crocodile and hippo meat to stew pots and food stores. Seventeen people died and thirty-three more sustained serious injuries, twelve of them badly enough exclude them from the upcoming battle.

Because of continued risk of wildlife attack, Merida ordered all camps to be pitched at least a hundred paces from the water line. She also increased the night watch.

As a dull sun settled onto the horizon, Merida let her gaze drift about her. Small, A-shaped tents of Roman design stretched in rows as far as she could see. Larger tents and tarpaulins, as well as tall Norse A-frame tents rose above the smaller A-frames. Merida herself would might have preferred to sleep out under a clear sky, but the quickly-cooling desert air dissuaded her. Small campfires sprouted up, the sounds of war drums following not long after.

* * *

“Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”

Merida pried her eyes open and groaned. “It's barely thinking about bein' light,” she grumbled.

She pulled a blanket back over her head as the chanter continued his call from some minaret across the water. But, as had been the case further north, the blanket had negligible muffling effect. She finally gave up and staggered out of her tent in a most un-dignified manner.

It had taken the better part of a week to row up the Nile to the southern end of its delta where the river split just downstream from Cairo. Beyond the papyrus reeds and trees lining the river, the dust of the other armies and the smoke and glow from their campfires had reminded Merida of the Exodus.

Now she looked across the Nile from the eastern shore of Gezira Island, separated from Giza by what had become another muddy ditch. To the east lay the rest of Cairo, the Citadel of Salah ad-Din dominating a massif that loomed over the city.

Two hours later, Merida rowed across the river while the sun still lay below the low eastern hills. Several rickety-looking docks protruded from an expanse of papyrus on the eastern bank. Her pilot found a space between a fishing boat and a trade cog and tied up. She soon found it to be an extension of the original, much sturdier, stone pier. She stepped from that onto a broad street flagged with pale grey stone and into utter chaos.

People jostled each other. Some carried loads on their heads or backs. Most of those loads were sacks or baskets. Some baskets had lids firmly tied on. Others had contents protruding out. Some of those she recognized by sight, others by smell, others still were alien to her. All the languages of all the people up and down the Nile and those who traded with them blended with one another. Donkeys brayed. Wheels squeaked and ground while loads thumped. The melange of sounds and smells bombarded her senses as surely as the coming Jotun onslaught.

Merida and Hubert looked at each other and shrugged. They re-seated their own satchels and plunged into the throng in the general direction of the citadel.

A few hundred paces along a dusty, packed earth passage between two apparently temporary structures brought them out into a vast open space, which Merida took to be a gap between the ramshackle buildings crowding the riverbank and the squat, rectangular buildings crowding the base of the Citadel massif. She didn't have time to contemplate the nature of the gap or the reason for it.

The road, if one could call it that, between the dockside shantytown and the uplands, teemed with people streaming in both directions. Merida had never imagined any place so turgid with humanity.

She and Hubert found a place among the traffic and wound their way through poorly-irrigated fields of crops she didn't recognize. By the time they wound up around the northern edge of the prominence supporting the citadel, the sun had risen seven diameters above the horizon. Thankfully, the crowds had thinned out as merchants and travelers had peeled off to their destinations.

Short columns of foreign soldiers representing multiple governments lined both sides of the street in both directions, some practically huddled against the sheer walls of the massif, jostling with local cart, wagon, and foot traffic for space. The jostling frequently erupted into short-lived shouting matches.

Dirt gave way to brick pavement that wound its way around the massif, curving first north, then east, before cresting out at a cleft between lower adobe-work to the north, and the towering walls of the citadel to the south.

Merida exchanged glances with Hubert. They grimaced at each other. Before Merida could say much else, Hubert stepped in front of her.

“Make way!” he bellowed. “Make way for Merida, queen of the Celts! Make way!”

Merida resisted the urge to roll her eyes as her brother plowed into the throng. She supposed that his sheer size had at least as much to do with the way the people parted before him like so much wheat before the scythe as did her own political position. Given the stiffly misogynistic local culture, she strongly suspected the former.

Still, she made a conscious effort to carry herself like the queen she was, and strode after her brother. She lost count of how many steps it took them to climb up to the Citadel's gates

Several guards blocked the way. Two were in the middle of an energetic shouting match with another man, spittle flying in both directions.

Three of those not already occupied craned their necks up at Hubert. He glared down at them, one hand conspicuously thrumming its fingers on the hilt of his sheathed sword.

“Queen Merida of Dun Broch has business with Sultan Salah ad-Din.” He leaned slightly toward them. “He is expecting her.”

The men looked at him the way a cow might look at an oncoming train. “Mish fahem,” I do not understand, said one.

Hubert grunted. “I knew we should have brought an interpreter,” he muttered.

“He's down with influenza,” Merida muttered back.

“Or something,” Hubert added.

Merida sighed through her nose. She at once regretted not having made an effort to learn a few useful phrases in Arabic, and resented being made dependent on someone's good graces because of it. Unfortunately, no amount of regret or resentment was going to help.

“So now what?” Hubert muttered.

Merida glanced at her brother, and then at the guard who seemed to be in charge. The man stood there like a rock in a stream, his on hand on the hilt of his sword, brown eyes boring into Merida's from beneath the rim of a gleaming helm wrapped with scarlet silk about the base. A trace of laughter glinted in his eye, his lips almost, but not quite, threatening to smile.

Merida allowed a slight smile of her own. She nodded to the man. He nodded back.

“Merida Hukkaam,” he said. “Yilha'ni, minfadlik.” Merida Queen, follow me, please. He made a beckoning gesture as he turned and strode off into the grounds.

Merida and Hubert followed side by side.

The noise from the street quickly faded, blocked, she supposed, by the wall. The fortress grounds were still busy. People bustled about on various errands. Some tended to the garden's plantings. Others manipulated wooden gates at junctions in an intricate network of small irrigation canals. Soldiers marched about in rigid columns. Other people, some armed and some not, stood about tending to various beasts of burden.

It was hard to gauge the size of the compound. Palms, figs, sycamores, olives, and other kinds of vegetation alien to Merida blocked her view of the far walls she knew had to be there. Here and there, low block-built buildings peeked out between those trees. If she had to guess, the enclosed space was at least four times that of castle Dun Broch. She suddenly felt vulnerable, despite her brother's and her own considerable combat skills and the various weapons, visible and concealed, they each carried.

Just beyond the southwestern end of the fortress, twin spires towered above the multiple domes of the Mosque of Mohammad Ali.

“How many of those things do they need?” Hubert muttered.

“Don't know,” Merida muttered back. “Don't really care, either. It's their business anyway. Ours is getting them to work together to fight the Jotnar.”

He had a point, though. Everywhere one looked in Cairo, minarets jutted up toward the sky, rising above every other structure around. Granted, the churches and cathedrals of Europe were the same way in regard to the architecture, but nowhere so numerous. How a city even the size of Cairo could support so many houses of worship, Merida couldn't fathom. Fortunately, as she'd said to her brother, that wasn't why they were there.

A small fountain surrounded by grey-white crushed stone punctuated the strip of greenery. It burbled weakly and Merida discerned that it had probably been gushing water before the effects of the Fimbulwinter had diminished the Nile's headwaters. A film of algae coated the stone beneath the trickling water. People and beasts stood, drinking from the slightly turbid water.

Their guide led them to a large structure on the southeastern side of the compound and paused. “Yistanna hina,” wait here, he said. He spun on the ball of a foot, trotted up the stair, and disappeared into the building.

Merida took the time to evaluate her surroundings. Geometric pathways criss-crossed the interior, separating swaths of turf where sheep grazed. Free-standing Roman columns punctuated stagnant pools and lined pathways alongside date palms and olive trees. At the northeastern end of the compound, a set of broad steps led down to what seemed to be a cistern catchment. Trebuchets at rest pointed skyward atop each of the fortress' many broad, round towers.

The people loitering about displayed a wide array of clothing. Clearly, representatives of many of the world's participating armies had already arrived.

She didn't recognized all of them, of course. A few she knew: Spain; France; several of the German states; Italy; the Norse. Others she could guess, based on certain descriptions: Arabia; Greece; Russia; Japan; Mongolia; India; Zulu. All of them looked like they meant business. From the glares and furtive glances they kept shooting at one another, she didn't need to guess at what sort of business that was. She sighed through her nose. Keeping that international cat-herd under anything resembling control was going to be a far bigger headache than she'd imagined.

Time crawled. She passed it by trying to read the people around her. Some of it was a lost cause. There was just so much she realized she didn't know about other cultures' body language. To make matters worse, enough of those around her were clearly seasoned warriors and professional soldiers. That they'd been chosen to accompany their kings, lords, and so on meant they were elite, and probably not prone to displaying much body language of any kind. Still, they were the people who were going to be fighting at Ragnarok.

By the time the sun had progressed seven whole diameters across the sky, Merida had begun to wonder if she was going to have to simply barge in and start bashing some heads. The shadows before her dimmed, and the wind rose. She looked up at a rapidly-clouding sky. A column of light lanced downward, held position for several moments, then vanished, the clouds rapidly dissipating. She recognized the newly-arrived figure at once.

“Odin Konung,” she said amiably, inclining her head politely. “Welcome.”

Odin covered the space between them in a few long strides. “Merida Drottning,” he said, “I would not have expected you to tarry out here.”

Merida's eyes narrowed. “Nor would I. Yet it seems that my...hosts have had other ideas.”

“Have you...”

“Thought about just barging in?” She chuckled. “I was this close to doing just that.”

Odin grinned. “Then it would seem that I have arrived just in time, ja?”

Merida smiled. “Far be it from me to disappoint the Allfather.”

She turned back to the structure into which her erstwhile guide had vanished some time before. She had barely taken a step before a guard moved to bar her way. She stepped inside the reach of his weapon, back-handed him across the face, and slammed the heel of her palm into his sternum, sending him sprawling. Behind her, she heard a grunt as, presumably, her brother did the same. She mounted three steps and strode into the gloom, Hubert and Odin on her heels. The interior coolness chilled the film of perspiration on her skin.

Near the far side of an antechamber, a robed man stepped out to block her path. He began to say something, but Merida preemptively interrupted.

She held a finger up to his nose and said, “You will take me to Salah Ad-Din now. And no excuses!”

The man looked cross-eyed at her finger, then said, “Mish fahem.”

Odin cleared his throat and spoke, the words echoing in Merida's mind, their meaning felt more than heard. “You heard the lady. Would you bar the general of your armies from an audience with your ruler?”

The man started to speak once more.

“Dilwa'ti!” Merida snarled. Now!

The man shrank back a little, though not as much as Merida would have preferred. He nodded, then beckoned her to follow. He led the trio down a short corridor, up a dark stone stair and into another room illuminated by windows facing the fortress' interior.

A long wooden table occupied the center of the room. A rough map of the region lay upon it. Around it sat roughly two dozen men. Behind each of them stood one or two others. Merida presumed them to be the leaders of the armies gathered for Ragnarok, accompanied by interpreters or aides. At the far end, only one stood, a tall man half-glaring at her through dark, piercing eyes set in a severe, black-bearded face.

Merida collected herself, channeling her mother as best she could, and glided serenely along the wall, past dozens of watchful eyes, stopping a few feet from the standing man.

“Sultan Salah ad-Din, I presume?” she said.

At first, Salah ad-Din said nothing. Yet his gaze never wavered from Merida's. Before long, she began to wonder if he had decided to hold an impromptu staring contest. At last, his mouth pulled into a smile.

“You presume correctly. Merida Queen, aiwa?”

Merida nodded. “Aiwa.” Yes. “And may I introduce my brother Prince Hubert, and King Odin of Asgard,” she added.

“Welcome,” said Salah ad-Din.

“Shall I infer that you have been discussing the upcoming battle?”

Salah nodded.

“I trust there is a reason you have delayed the inclusion in the two people most critical to the success of that battle.”

Salah simply stared back at her. She resisted the urge to yield the floor to Odin and let him intimidate the sultan. It occurred to her that their meeting had just become a battle of wills, one that Merida was not about to lose. So she just stood there, peering into those dark eyes.

After far longer than Merida thought should be necessary, when she thought her eyes were on the verge of shriveling up in the Egyptian air, Salah blinked.

“I see you are a woman of strong will,” he said. “And you are correct. I apologize for my lack of manners. Shall we?” He gestured to the map on the table.

Merida, Hubert, and Odin joined Salah ad-Din at the head of the table. The ensuing discussion of battle tactics and overall strategy stretched on and on, made cumbersome by the need for translators from all those other languages. By the time they had finished, the sun had set and Merida felt that her head was about to explode. But they had a plan. All that remained was to trust that the others would do their parts, or else watch the world die.


End file.
